Topic : 11/23 Love Scams?

It's a sad state of affairs that in 2006 some women are still so desperate and lonely.  Are we still basing our worth on the opinion of some man?  It breaks my heart that with all the strides women have made, there are those that still don't recognize their own worth and value.

   I haven't fell for the Nigerian Scam bc I always delete those, but I've had my share of getting e-mails from Russian women whom I never met in person, but when you look into their photo, they're very attractive, and as you start to e-mail them more and more, you do being to fall in love. 

   The thing that always concerns me is just when they wanna come visit, they always say; I got a lady friend whose aunt is in Africa, that can help, but since Western Union doesn't go well in Africa to send her my banking information and that way I think the money would be wired to my account.  That is always a red flag deal, and that's why I wrote to Dr. Phil with that e-mail, but haven't heard back. 

   I'll print the copy of the e-mail, and take it to the bank to see If they can tell If it smells like a scam or not.  What do you think? Give me your e-mail address and I'll e-mail you the message.

I too was scammed by someone claiming to be a handsome white man working in Nigeria.  We talked for a good month or so before he told me he was robbed and that he had money orders from his boss but they were American money orders and could only be cashed in the US....after a few days I finally agreed to let him send them to me. Let me mention he sent me flowers weekly.  I recieved 5 money orders all for $950 each (I do believe that was the amount)  I took them to my bank, opened a new account with the money orders.  I waited a couple of weeks before doing anything with the money just to be sure.  Well he told me I could use part of the money to pay a couple of bills I was behind on, so I did.  Well then he tells me to wire the rest Western Union to him in Nigeria and to make sure I sent it in Americam format.  Later I was being threatened with my life by someone else, His Boss!  The man he was doing this for.  Saying I spent too much of the money etc... I was getting so many different names instant messaging me it wasn't funny.  Some saying they were in Texas and they were coming to kill me.  Anyway....I went to the police, gave them the transaction papers from Western Union, emailed them the threats I was getting etc... The bank froze my own bank account.  Luckily I never had to pay back any of the money from the fake money orders.  Finally after awhile the people from Nigeria left me alone.  I did recieve an instant message or two from the man I orignally started talking to saying he was sorry for everything and that he really did love me, Bah!  He also told me his real age and name and that if he could get out of this type of work he would, that he wanted to get an education and a real  job.  Now I get messages on Yahoo and MySpace from men with a handsome mans photo and they ALL say the SAME thing.  They call you Angel or Pretty and say they live in Florida or somewhere in the states and that they are a single dad of one daughter.  Their grammar is very poor, you can tell they are lieing about who they are.  So now, I tell them to "Piss Off"!  And that they need to try a new line LOL  I tell them they are fake etc...  I ask them "How stupid do you people think us American women really are?  It happened to me once, It won't happen again!"

The person that DeeDee was corresponding with is the same person I chatted with about 2 weeks ago.  He said his name was Simon Larry not Cole.  It is the same picture and also another picture of the same man in a suit.  He told me he was from Arkansas, that his father was from there and his mother was Nigerian.  He also told me he had a 9 year old son.  He wanted me to chat with his son, I told him that was not appropriate and I would  not do it.  He then told me that he was going to visit his mother in Nigeria for 2 weeks and that he would miss me so much....he wanted my phone number.  I did not give him my number.  While he was suppsedly visiting his mother he would chat with me saying he waited for me and that it was like 3 oclock in the morning.  He then started to tell me he was sad that he was in trouble with customs and needed about $12,000 in order to get his gold and gems back to the states.  I told him I did not have the money.  He asked me for the money every night for about a week.  I told him the same thing everytime.  Then he had another suggestion.  I needed to go to Capital One and open an account there....he had a client in China that was ready to pay him alot of money he owed him.  But that since the client was in China and he was in Nigeria the funds would not be able to be transferred to him.  I told him that I did not want to do that.  He proceeded to tell me that I never loved him....which I never did.  He started to say not so nice things to me.  Finally when I flat out told him no that I was not sending money or opening an account for him he got extremely angry and told me I was a Bad Woman and to F*** Off!!! 

I knew something was not right with the whole situation, I just got a bad feeling from it.  A good friend that I work with sent me this information on this show.  I was shocked and amazed that it was the same picture and somewhat same story.  I can not even pretend to understand why some women fall for things like this.....I will  not try to understand or judge.  I just hope they learn from their mistakes and please do not let it happen again.  We work hard for what we have....do not let some scammer take advantage of that.

How can you say that's funny?  This is my 49 year old sister, with two kids I'm talking about.

Nothing funny about this!

The problem with the love scammers and advanced fee fraud artists is that is nearly impossible to have these criminals arrested.  They operate out of internet cafes, collect their money from wire services such as Western Union and Money Gram in which they use fake ID to collect their money.  Any law enforcement officer will tell you that arresting these people is near next to impossible.  There are plenty of stories (as seen here) on how people's lives have been damaged because of these criminals.

Note: Beware anybody who says they can get your money back for you from one of these scammers for a small fee.  That is a complete lie.  They cannot.  Once a scammer has gotten your money,  especially if it was sent Western Union,  that money is lost forever.   This is in itself a scam,  praying on the victims of these crimes.

The best way to fight this crime is knowledge and to get everybody informed.   Some insensitive idiots will claim that this is the victims fault and they should know better.   How many people have been ripped off by sending money to phony charities claiming to help out Hurricane Katrina or the Tsnunami in Indonesia last year.    Whenever a major tragedy happens,  the internet scammers start typing up their letters to prey on people's sense of compassion.    

Many people on here have asked how is it they got your e-mail.   The scammers use e-mail extractor programs and use them to siphon e-mail addresses off of websites,  in particular, guestbooks.

Do a Yahoo search for "guestbook mugu".  You will find thousands of examples of this.   You can scroll down the guestbook and you often find something like this written.

"I don land here keep offfffffffffffff'  - mugu@mugu.com"

This is akin to a dog marking a tree to signify territory.   This is the scammer telling other scammers that he has claimed the e-mail addresses in this guestbook as his.   Mugu is a Nigerian word for "stupid person".   If you took your e-mail address and put it in so much as 5 of these guestbooks,  the "road to riches e-mails" will start flowing into your box within days if not hours.  If you use a free e-mail address such as Yahoo, hotmail, AOL,  it is only a matter of time before you will get scammer e-mail.

Finding scammers is easy.  Go to a small business chat room in Yahoo chat and don't be surprised how quickly you get an IM from somebody claiming to be an exporter/importer from Nigeria looking to do business with you.

So how do I fight back besides spreading the word?

I engage in a hobby known as scambaiting.  Scambaiters pretend to be victims in order to waste the time and resources of these internet criminals.   If a scammer spends more time in communication with me because he thinks there is a payday coming,  he is more likely to miss out on scamming a real victim.

There are law enforcement people who will tell you not to engage scammers because of the potential danger involved.   This is true if you decided to engage these criminals using your real life information.  However,  as easily as the scammers can remain anonymous to you,  you can be just as anonymous to them.

For example: at a website that fights scammers  www.thescambaiter.com    one baiter was able to trick a scammer into paying for the overseas delivery of complete junk - 10 times!    Another baiter convinced the scammers he was the cast of Gillians Island while they were marooned on a deserted island.   Another baiter pretended to be the cast of "I dream of Jeannie" in a complete waste of scammers time and money.

There is nothing like the power of turning the tricks of the scammer against him and making him look like a complete fool.